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A decommissioned underground pipeline that once carried gasoline across the state and through Lancaster County could see new life from the Marcellus shale gas boom.

Representatives of Sunoco Inc., of Philadelphia, have recently been in West Cocalico and Clay townships doing site surveys and scouting locations for a pumping station needed as part of a statewide retrofit of the pipeline so that it can transport natural gas to a facility in Delaware.

“Mariner East 1 is a project to transport natural gas liquids (NGLs), also called liquefied petroleum gases (LPGs) from the Marcellus and Utica shales in Western Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia to the Marcus Hook Industrial Complex on the Pennsylvania/Delaware border,” Sunoco representative Jeff Shields wrote in an email Nov. 20.

The Mariner East 1 project would stretch from a Sunoco facility just outside Houston, Pa., in Chartiers Township, Washington County, to its transportation hub in Marcus Hook, Delaware County, or a distance of about 300 miles.

DANVILLE – A Pennsylvania health company said it has gotten a $1 million grant to study possible health impacts of natural gas drilling on the Marcellus Shale.

Geisinger Health System said Monday that the Degenstein Foundation had awarded the money to help underwrite what it called a “large-scale, scientifically rigorous assessment” of the drilling.

Most of the money will be used for data-gathering, and some will go toward developing studies of the data. Officials said they expect other funders to come forward.

The study is to look at detailed health histories of hundreds of thousands of patients who live near wells and other facilities that are producing natural gas from the Marcellus Shale formation thousands of feet underground.

A local role in the state’s natural gas drilling boom isn’t quite as far-fetched as it was a month ago, now that a federal report has identified some potential for an untapped supply beneath southern Berks County.

The natural gas in question is contained in the South Newark Basin. Its western tip lies under a triangular wedge of Berks that includes Douglassville, Birdsboro and Exeter Township, according to the report issued in June by the U.S. Geological Survey.

USGS estimated that 785 billion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas could be in the basin.

The planned closure of five coal-fired power plants in Pennsylvania, including the Titus Generating Station plant in Cumru Township, is a sign of a fundamental transformation in regional energy markets in which natural gas is sharing the leadership spotlight once occupied only by coal, according to top state observers.

“The economics are showing us, right now, a ‘dash-to-gas’ scenario,” said Robert F. Powelson, chairman of the state Public Utility Commission.

Patrick D. Henderson, state energy executive for Gov. Tom Corbett, said natural gas is playing a far greater role in supplying power to the regional grid than it did only a few years ago.

“We knew to anticipate coal-fired power-plant retirement in Pennsylvania,” Henderson said. “We did not know specifically those facilities were going to (close).”